5 Things You Didn't Know: Che Guevara

Che Guevara

There is a saying in Argentina: “Tengo una remera del Che, y no sé por qué,” which roughly translates to “I have a Che T-shirt, and I don’t know why.”

The saying reflects a justified cynicism among Argentineans that one of their favorite sons, Marxist revolutionary-for-hire Ernesto ‘Che’ Guevara, has been misappropriated by capitalist-minded opportunists and trend-seeking college kids the world over. Che’s iconic image, with his disheveled rock star hair falling out from a starred black beret, has been used illicitly to sell hundreds of products to the rebellious-minded, with T-shirts and posters probably topping the list.

A guerilla fighter who became part of the high command during the Cuban Revolution, Che Guevara was educated in medicine but his communist ideals were molded after a famous motorcycle trip through South America’s poorest regions.

However, so much of what is known or believed about Che Guevara has been extracted from history and filtered for public consumption in a mythmaking process. To help remedy that, we present five things you didn’t know about one of the most controversial figures of the 20th century, Che Guevara.

1- Che Guevara ordered thousands of executions

A company that sponsors tours to Cuba touts La Cabaña Fortress prison as the place where “Che helped consolidate the victory of the revolution.” Historians estimate Che "consolidated" the lives of as many as 2,000 people.

Che Guevara was a rebel in search of a cause when he met Fidel and Raul Castro in 1955, in Mexico. As an anxious soldier fighting Castro’s cause, he distinguished himself quickly and was promoted to comandante; in the Sierra Maestra mountains he enforced a zero tolerance policy toward deserters by sending execution squads to hunt them down.

Once in power, Che Guevara was appointed head of La Cabaña, where he ran one of the century’s more modest — if no less shameful — kangaroo courts. He did his part to purge Cuba of Batista loyalists by playing judge, jury and executioner in a manner reminiscent of Stalin’s Great Terror of the 1930s. It was here he earned the name The Butcher of La Cabaña.

His population "consolidation" continued the following year, when he oversaw the establishment of the Guanahacabibes concentration camp. As noted by Alvaro Vargas Llosa in The New Republic, Guanahacabibes set the groundwork for the Nazi-inspired confinement of undesirables in the province of Camagüey from 1965 onward.

2- Che Guevara is worshipped as Saint Ernesto

On October 8, 1967, U.S.-trained Bolivian rangers captured Che in a ravine near the Bolivian town of La Higuera, and the next day he was summarily executed in a local schoolhouse. His body was then moved to the nearby town of Vallegrande and displayed for the press inside a laundry room. The manner in which his body was laid out has predictably inspired shaky comparisons to Christ, and the room itself has become a place of pilgrimage. In fact, both towns are featured along the “Ruta del Che" or Che Guevara Trail, where for a fee tourists can walk in the very footsteps of the revolutionary.

However, for a number of Catholics in parts of La Higuera, Che’s image stands front and center with church superstars such as the Virgin Mary and Pope John Paul II, and locals frequently pray to him as "Saint Ernesto," although this sainthood is unofficial and not acknowledged by the Vatican.

3- Che Guevara's hands were preserved in formaldehyde

Following Che Guevara’s execution, his body and possessions were pillaged by his killers.

CIA agent Felix Rodriguez, who interrogated Che Guevara, had planned to take Che’s famous pipe, but in the end allowed the soldier who actually shot Che to take it — Rodriguez took the tobacco.

Cuban-born CIA operative Gustavo Villoldo snipped a lock of Che’s hair. He held on to it for 40 years, finally putting it up for auction in 2007, where it set an auction record for the highest price paid for a lock of hair: about $100,000.